Children's Engineering: Pirate map

Several years ago, I went to a Children's Engineering Conference with our Gifted Teacher and learned so many cool things that we brought back to our school.  Now each year we have an Engineering Fair that all children in the building participate in.  It ranges from projects that children make at home with their families to the ones we all make in our classrooms.  The cool thing about engineering projects is that children are give "criteria" in which they must work within to problem solve and create a product.  I am posting a simple one that my team mate and I made during our unit on Maps.  I also posted some photo's of our finished products.  In the map project, the criteria was to make a map of an Island that had a Pirate's buried treasure.  The learning objective involved the students being able to show that a symbol stands for something and that these symbols on a map help a person locate a place. This is the simplified version of our state's Standards of Learning for First Grade Social Studies: Maps.  I have many more "Design Briefs", but wanted to start here because it is so fresh and the kids finished products were so neat looking.  I hope you enjoy!

Download Pirate Map Design Brief Here

 I put this map up here even though it wasn't finished (the water wasn't colored in) because it shows all of the symbols so well.  I provided the kids with a Compass Rose that they cut out and pasted, but they could have drawn their own.